The Seeking
by Carryon14
Summary: The infinite possibilities of Sabewan. Vignettes spanning Episodes 1-4.
1. Dear Obiwan

A/N: So I'm plugging along on "Nowhere to Remain" (it has been majorly revamped, but since there isn't an end in sight, I figure I'll wait to post it until I have more time to work on it - Many thanks to Die Geschichtenerzaehlerin for all the wonderful comments!), and bits of these come out that can't be used, but I like them nonetheless. Here's for my record keeping, then, and your amusement.

* * *

_Dear Obi-wan._

_This is a test trial, to see if the Temple filters your mail. I figured if they were going to screen for obscenities, such as _

_[and here was a string of dirty words]_

_I might as well send via some other medium. Also, this is to make sure you weren't going to get all Code-strict and not write me back. You promised, and promise-breakers are wankers, remember that!_

_Yours._

_Or, since you Jedi don't hold with the use of the possessive,_

_As a friend whose friendship (her own) is affiliated to you –_

_Sabe Nabarrie_


	2. Dearest Sabe

A/N: Fast-forward about 15, 20 years since their meeting... and kudos to who can recognize the Austen novel did I steal shamelessly from.  


* * *

II

When Sabe arrived and made the appropriate motions to the touch-pad at the door, he had already left. The log by the door said that she was three hours too late. Glancing eastward she saw on the horizon the departing shadows of a thousand command ships from the Republicas' hangars. Her own employers had canceled their contract with the Galactic Republic from some unexplained misunderstanding with the Chancellor himself, or she might have gone with him.

She might have been there with him, Sabe thought, if not in the same capacity then at least near. The body had a field of its own, infinitely more powerful than just the imagination. But war had begun; and he would face it as he must, and she would wait, for whatever.

The sun was setting as Sabe walked out onto the balcony, their balcony, which looked the same as it ever did. The white tablecloth shone gold in the light, the thin-legged glasses sparkled clear. The wind was up, bringing with it the scent of sun and ozone, and the faint tang of exhaust fuel. Sabe closed her eyes. Perhaps if he were here, she would know what to say. The right words came when he was near, and the peace that he brought descended over things, and she could see clearly what it was that she must do, must say, must face, and would feel her self equal to all of it. That little comfort, that intimate silence he wore about him like a second skin, that unraveled and filled the air between them, as if something too came from herself – that is what she wished for now. But he had gone. Words would be of no more use, spoken to the air.

The little waiter made a whizzing sound as it came up behind her, one burgundy glass on its tray, and she was about to wave it away when she saw that the little glass platter held something else.

_For Sabe,_ read the spiky hand that she recognized only vaguely as Obi-wan's. So little was written by hand anymore but blurry notes one left for oneself on the nightstand. Somewhere before she had seen this – but she could not recall now. She took the letter into her hands, feeling the heft of the paper, it was strangely coarse under fingers used to the smoothness of metal, but warmed by the sun, rounded by virtue of its material. There was one sheet of paper, covered in the same scrawl. Obi-wan had either written in agitation or in a great hurry. She read

_My Dearest –_

_There is not much time. Even now the Council calls and I am bound for Kamino. My feelings – my "knack", as you will – tell me that what must be revealed from that invisible planet will give us too many answers, and too little time, before that war that must come. But time has never been in abundance between us. Even now we pass each other in the same rooms, the same sun-scoured balcony, unseeing, unaware for the time that separates us. Let me only imagine you beside me then, perhaps by candlelight, or by the golden tint of sunset - _

_You see how I lag, hem and haw, and look at my feet, afraid to come to a point (Dearest, Your Royal Highness, Shiraya' daughter). But I must speak, in such means that are within my reach._

_I have loved none but you since that day, more than ten years ago. Can you failed to have seen this? I cannot believe that when those bright eyes turn so piercingly on me. I think that you must know. _

_Time, and codes have stood between us, but to know, as I know, that splendid, overflowing joy that is merely the sight of you – let no man deem himself immune from the touch of passion. It is the lifeblood – and only through it, perhaps, might the heart be reconciled with peace._

_I am afraid this parting will be for a long time. More than ever I wish to have spoken this to you, but another, more cowardly part, wonders that if you did not take this with welcome, whether I could have borne it. Sabe – If this confession is a burden, I apologize. It is a selfish act, of a man unsure of his future, and regretful of the past. But if welcome – though now I scarcely dare hope for it – if it be welcome, a look from you will be enough. And if force willing I survive this mission, and the war that follows, I will have lived for you. I remain  
_

_Yours._

_ Obi-wan_

Such a letter was not to be easily recovered from. Her hands trembled, that the shadows of evening danced and made patterns on the white cloth. But what else could she do but laugh, as well - for it how like them to be prudent in youth, then to bind themselves, hide themselves behind codes and rules. Yet now more than ten years later, on the brink of galactic war, in what some would consider middle age, only now have they learned to write love letters, to rediscover romance.


	3. First Sight

A/N: We're back on Tatooine in TPM

* * *

**III**

The first time he saw her, truly, was not until the sandstorm.

All the glimpses before were just – glimpses, like glancing taps of a pin on a smooth surface, her metal-polished façade. Indeed Obi-wan knew well about that, the cultivated web of serenity that spread through the veins and holds the face at some internal angle. But for her it was interfused even into her muscles, this mask that made the forehead shine a little more brilliantly in the light, and set the lines of her jaw more firmly one would expect. It was startling, in fact, the set of that mouth, the certainty of which human lineaments might be capable. He thought to himself that first day: she was not to be known, for all their sakes. Master Qui-gon had not trained him to mask as well as that girl-queen.

Suddenly Obi-wan felt great appreciation for that foreign art, of stoicism, in the body as well as in the mind, the subjection of every muscle to the requisite, absolute stillness. The prescience impelled him – and he wanted to learn this skill, to have it in the future – for he was young, and the youthful mind was filled with notions of future strife. Against that time he must prepare a toolkit of skills. And from this girl he sought to learn the Art of Distance.

From patient observation, he noted that she in fact was never – and had never been, perhaps – utterly still. It was only the sense of collectedness, as if all the pieces of the mind were present together, in harmony, at all times – as if she were entirely coherent. And when she did fidget, it was in her blink; a slight tendency of the left lid to close faster than the right. And he thought still, that she was not to be known.

They were stifled in the Throne Room. They were granted grudging permission to disembark – oh how good it was to feel the space around him. They gathered under the gleaming silver wing to speak, he and the handmaidens, who were talkative enough, as spirited as girls are, normally. He watched her move away, to sit like a statue, only wisps of hair glowing, blowing in the sun. She was painted, too pale for the climate.

The storm came. That is to say, they must have seen it coming while they sat. The sand around them turned animate as it must have been in the distant beginning of things, he thought, when the dust in the great void sensed the swirling, the inexorable pull of one another. The great dance played before them, timeless, and the sound was like water falling. And the colors were gold and brown. Then it was upon them, and the darkness came over them in one swoop, complete. He heard the handmaidens calling to each other, to get inside. They stumbled, as people do in elements other than kindred air; they shielded their faces. One of them motioned to him – another looked without use for their queen. At the last moment the sun pierced through in a gash of vermilion, and he saw again the curve of her forehead, and the flash was gone, winked out.

She was but ten steps from them. She was in the dark. Sand scoured his face, warm from layers close to the sun, then cool stinging bits from buried sand. He ushered the handmaidens in through the side door, the light of which blinded him, when he turned back to the dark. Then it felt to him not unlike a silence – the great sustaining roar fell quiet. The infinite dark stayed, and he could not see her, only reach before him, grasping fistfuls of sand.

And then he felt her hand.

And grasping it he felt her cling to him, suddenly, shockingly close, and her face was all white that it glowed a little in the dimness, as if all the light had been drawn to it. And she was afraid, he could see. Simply afraid. And he felt, seeing this, through the sand storm, merely this – a pale face, on which relief crossed with simple fear. And at her smile, when she looked up at him, he threw his cloak over both of them.

It was ordinary. It was nothing, really. He told her that too, back in the cockpit, as they shook off the sand. She thanked him gravely. But he felt that was somehow, more than everything. For all the while he could still see – looking in her face – all at once not only relief, fear, and composure, but as if all emotion could then be inferred, all at once. As if he had in hand some secret cipher, or say the imagination to see things as they are, animate, as if he could sense, merely from this small evidence of grimace and smile the scope of her entire soul, and found it – beautiful.


	4. Longing

A/N: if Sabe had been caretaker of Winter and Leia on Alderaan.

* * *

IV

Then there are the days when Sabe feels assailed, utterly, by the sense of him. It would catch her doing the dishes, or in the middle of meditation practice with Winter, half-uttering a sentence to Leia, dangling a toy, and it hits hard enough to rob her of her breath. As if a thin string had formed itself out of the substance in her chest, of her life's blood and stretched out, beyond, beyond, and she did not know where it was to go, or if it would ever arrive at a destination. But those hair-raising moments it felt as if the whole delicate web of living particulate, glistening strings had snapped, that it left her reeling from dizziness, and had to support herself by the wall.

She does not know where it comes from, and in the beginning it was all she could do to see it as some form of disease. A pain that comes out of nowhere is merely the body responding to some unseen agent coursing in her blood. She had enough strangeness in her blood to accept the presence of a little more, she thought. But it did not explain this: that reality was beneath her fingers, in the sand under her toes, the brush of sun on her face, and if she took this merely to be of the body, then why did it feel as if the sensation itself extended into another dimension?

A differently-real place, as if separated from her by the eons of darkness, of vast space, and she was stretched thin to the breaking point, trying to reach that - reach that...It was impossible to deny, that sense - and it was not loss but utter longing, though Sabe did not know what in life could be so utterly worth longing for. Was not the reality full of dismal grayness, with mere scatterings of clearing in between, to keep her going on? Why should she trust this, this sweet and painful longing, that filled her with nothing but sadness - a sudden sting about the eyes, a shiver in the skin of the arms, utterly useless and compelling.

Yet there was such love in it, the longing, so much filled over brimming with tears that was the only thing close enough to it, exuding from her in thin rivulets. There were words to it, that spoke in her heart, and made it break for her to say this across the darkness of night, to him unseen, unfelt, unknown and yet close unto her very own heart - may you have every happiness, she told him, closing her own eyes that they both might dwell in the darkness under the cover of the world. May you be free of all suffering, for your happiness is a thousand of my own, and your sufferings compound my sufferings, and for the bond between us is love, though I do not know from whence it comes, and to whence it goes.

Only that beginningless and endless, the world overflows with it, and the air is charged with it, that when the smoke rises it rides upon love, and when the leaf falls it falls upon that love. And she knew that this went beyond Obi-wan, that it could not be for a person, or two people; or a thing, an artifact, an idea. It was the vaguest of vagaries, the charged valence of an emotion taking the shadow of a thought - it was the vanishing cloud under the sun - and yet it covered all of the earth. It was the merest breath, but it led to all those that would follow it. It was nothing at all, it was not very strong - it will not do the dishes for her, or care for Leia's many illnesses, or give her the words in the morning when the entire world closes in and it becomes hard to breathe. It was only there, in the corner of her eye, residing in the very heart of things and showing at the very periphery, the most conspicuous, and the least observed places, glittering hard like a chip of ice, too small to be touched, but just enough to catch the eye.


End file.
